The Vermeers are keeping good company too. There are fine paintings by some of the most distinguished of his peers — Jan Steen, Gerard Ter Borch and Pieter de Hooch among them — many of whom were in their time better known than Vermeer himself. The donor institutions include HM the Queen, the National Gallery and the Rijksmuseum — this is a high-quality assembly in every sense.

The theme of the exhibition is not just women but the idealised image of domestic life of which they were the centre. These paintings show the home as an entirely feminine realm and the ideal Dutchwoman as an exquisitely competent and, most importantly, occupied châtelaine. 

In this bourgeois Eden the women are busy even when they are doing nothing. Lassitude is an alien state and leisure is a positive activity — music-making, letter-reading, self-beautifying. There are of course less poetic tasks, the daily chores of cleaning and food preparation, but even here the likes of Nicolaes Maes and de Hooch give the women a meditative air. The fact that they are frequently framed in a doorway or window transforms them into glimpses caught by the returning burghers after a day at the bourse or on the quayside. As such they are also the antidote to male-dominated tavern scenes or the solemn confraternity gatherings captured by Frans Hals. But perhaps the most surprising thing about them is that seen together they seem to be painted almost with envy.